"I'm Art, new age philosophy major. Thought you may like to keep a dream journal.""Yep, me neither. I don't want to get too big.""I want to touch it.""I gotta touch 'em!" (referring to the urchins)"I can't go back to jail!""I want a piece of that action!""I'm ready to scare with you, to laugh with you...cry with you"

Art is one of the tritagonists in Disney/Pixar's 2013 film, Monsters University. A furry purple monster with an arch shape and blue stripes on his body, he is a student at Monsters University, and a member of the Oozma Kappa fraternity. He seems to be a comic relief in the movie. Director Dan Scanlon says of him he is "that [weird] college guy you don’t know anything about"[1], and that he is a student "Not quite sure what he should be... and we're not quite sure what he is either."[2] Art is a New Age Philosophy major, and has been to jail before.[3] For some reason, Art doesn't have a last name, and is therefore the only named student in the film without one.

Contents

Official Bio

"The ultimate free spirit, Art is a mysterious monster with a questionable background. By far the strangest member of the Oozma Kappas, Art bowls over the competition—sometimes literally—with his unique dexterity and wild-card ways. Nothing is scarier than the unpredictable, especially when it comes to this furry ball of bad."[4]

Personality

Art is considered to be a bit of an odd-ball. He has a good heart, but rather oblivious for the most part. He has many different interests, some of them nobody might know. In school, before becoming a Scaring Major later on, he was a New Age Philosophy major. He's quite skilled at acrobatics, dancing, and flexibility. He also apparently likes to keep a dream journal with him.

Monsters University

Art is introduced, along with his other fraternity brothers, when Mike and Sulley move into the Oozma Kappa fraternity home, and helps with the initiation for the two. In the first round of the Scare Games, the Toxicity Challenge, Art really wants to touch the stinging glow urchins that the players must avoid. He ignores that fact, but learns his lesson after scooping up a large amount, and his body gets swelled up in pain.

When the team is talking to Mike on the campus, he and the others are instructed by Mike to follow his exact moves in the next round. In the next round of the Scare Games, he and the others are perfectly silent, but after Sulley accidentally messes up, Art distracts the librarian by wreaking havoc in the library, and avoiding getting caught by her. Later at the ROR party, Art shows off his dance moves before getting humiliated by Johnny Worthington, along with the rest of Oozma Kappa. All but Mike is discouraged, until he takes the team on a trip to Monsters, Inc. to get their spirits high again.

As the games continue, Art and the others do well, leading up to the final event, where they must scare in the simulator. In Art's turn, he is up against Javier Rios. Art uses his stealth and acrobatic skills to avoid stepping on any toys in the simulator, and scares the child robot.

After Oozma Kappa wins the final round, he and the others celebrate, until Mike finds out that Sulley cheated for him, and he runs away, very heartbroken. When the group finds out that Mike went into the human world, they distract the security guards for Sulley to go into the door and save Mike. When they return and are escorted by the CDA, Roz assures the friends that whatever happens to the two is up to Dean Hardscrabble.

After Art and the others find out that Mike and Sulley have been expelled, they say their goodbyes, and also assure them that Hardscrabble has invited them to join in the next semester of the Scaring program, as she was impressed by their work in the games.

In the credits of the film, a Scare Card of Art is seen, indicating that he eventually is graduated as a Scarer for Monsters, Inc.

Trivia

When Art said "he can't go back to jail", this means he must have been to jail before. What for is unknown.

In the movie Art comments on "having an extra toe" but not with him, implying it's someone else's toe.

When the movie was in development, Dan Scalton described each of the misfit characters to sketch artists Jason Deamer and Chris Sasaki, but with Art, he just said "think mysterious". They went variation after variation and got really frustrated. Finally Chris Sasaki drew an "A" for his name and put two eyes in there. The character slowly evoluted from there.

Sources

This page uses Creative Commons Licensed content from the Pixar Wiki. The list of authors can be seen in the page revision history (view authors). As with Disney Wiki, the text of the Pixar Wiki is available under the CC-BY-SA license.